Miss Elsie (Elspeth) Thomson, later Mrs Kenneth Grahame, 1881 (oil on canvas)

signed and dated upper left in red paint (obscured by frame): FRANK DICKSEE 1881. A head-and-shoulders portrait of the future wife of Kenneth Grahame, author of 'The Wind in the Willows'. Their son Alastair, who was nicknamed 'Mouse' and had only one eye, was the inspiration for Toad. She was the daughter of Robert William Thomson (1822 -1873), the inventor of the pneumatic tyre and the first floating dock, and his wife, Clara Hertz. She was a favourite of Sir John Tenniel, who wrote her annual valentines, and a friend of Tennyson. She was also the step-daughter of John Fletcher Moulton, barrister and sometime Liberal MP. This was one of the first portraits exhibited by Dicksee, painted in 1881, and exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1882. A photograph of the picture taken soon after its exhibition shows that it is signed and dated which is only just visible now; the picture was unframed by National Trust's painting conservator, Tina Sitwell, in April 2013 and its presence confirmed. The sitter and her sister donated Dorneywood to the National Trust in 1943 with their brother Lord Courtauld-Thomson of Dorneywood as part of the Dorneywood Settlement. It seems that the picture was at Dorneywood as late as 1959 when a book on Grahame was written and the painting was illustrated. This information comes courtesy of Simon Toll. 20 Grosvenor Gardens, London